First Try: Team 7 Divergence
by Lucillia
Summary: If a situation can go both ways, it will. At every crossroads, a new universe is formed, and a person will always take the road not taken, even if they never see themselves do it. Tsunade makes a different choice, and there are consequences.
1. Chapter 1

Tsunade sighed as she packed the pair of rapists into a scroll and prepared them for transport. All this week, Shizune had been asking her not to do this, had been asking her what Dan and Nawaki would have wanted. At this moment, she didn't care what Dan or Nawaki wanted. All she wanted was Dan and Nawaki.

Hearing Jiraiya speak to the walking reminder of her loss about the wonderful woman she used to be had been the final nail in the coffin. That woman was dead and gone, and all that was left was a washed up old gambler who owed millions. Konoha didn't need such a woman to be Hokage. In fact, Konoha didn't deserve anything more from her. It had taken everything she had. Konoha had taken her grandfather, her great-uncle, her brother, any number of her cousins on both the Senju and Uzumaki sides of the family as well as her father's side of the family, her lover, and now her Sensei.

While she didn't want to see her former home destroyed, she could see why Orochimaru would want to do so. Konoha had taken Orochimaru's parents, the few friends he'd managed to make besides her and Jiraiya, and several of his students, including her brother Nawaki who had been on his first Genin team.

When the time came, she asked Orochimaru not to destroy Konoha as a condition of the healing. She could tell that he was lying when he agreed, but didn't really care. Her duty to Konoha was done, and she would be getting her brother and Dan back.

Orochimaru's arms were healed, and a moment after the deed was done, his end of the bargain was fulfilled. Dan and Nawaki stood before her looking exactly as they had in the final days of their lives.

"Nee-chan, why?" Nawaki asked as Orochimaru sank a kunai with a red seal tag into the boy as well as Dan.

"What is that?" she asked.

"Just a little insurance to make sure you don't try to shall we say, go back on your word." Orochimaru said with the coldly evil smile he'd always only directed at the enemy before. "Should you decide to attack me, they will attack you until you are dead no matter how that comes about. Sarutobi-sensei was forced to summon the Shinigami in order to deal with the last two that I summoned."

"Enjoy." Orochimaru said as he turned to leave.

Nawaki stood there staring at her with tears in his eyes and kept asking her why she had brought him back. Dan refused to even look at her no matter how many times she begged him to.

When Jiraiya came to her with completely dead eyes and a weapon in hand, she didn't even resist.

This time, it was Dan and Nawaki who got to watch her die.

&!&!&!&

Jiraiya was crying as he picked up Orochimaru's trail. Tsunade hadn't even resisted as he killed her, hadn't pulled out any last minute tricks, hadn't pulled a miracle out of her hat as he had been half hoping she would do.

His team which had been his family for almost as long as he could remember had shattered long ago. There was no hope of putting the pieces back together now. Sensei was dead, killed by Orochimaru. Tsunade was dead, killed by him. Orochimaru would soon be dead, and so would he. As much as he wanted to die today along with his teammates, he had one final task to complete. He would have to return his godson to Konoha and make sure the boy wasn't blamed for what had happened.

As he approached Orochimaru and his subordinate, he pulled out a certain storage scroll. He had already known what the black flames were when he'd collected them over a month ago. He had hoped to study them and find a way to counter them, but that was not to be.

His team had been like a version of a game of Janken. He'd been rock, Tsunade scissors, and Orochimaru paper. He'd been able to defeat Tsunade with some difficulty when he was really trying, Tsunade had been able to defeat Orochimaru, and Orochimaru always managed to pull some trick out of his ass that had left him reeling and wondering what the hell had just happened.

Today, it was him with the trick. He would have to thank Itachi when he met him in hell. Not only had the boy been "anonymously" passing information about the Akatsuki and their goals to him, but the boy had given him something he was certain would destroy Orochimaru, Amaterasu.

An hour later, he lay there bleeding, broken, and nearly dead. Naruto was in nearly the same shape. He had succeeded though. Both Orochimaru and his little spy had finally stopped screaming as the black flames devoured their bodies as well as the number of small white snakes that had attempted to flee the scene.

It was done. His team was dead. Once his final task was complete, the shell that was all that was left of him would be too.

&!&!&!&

Koharu sadly read the message that Jiraiya had sent by messenger toad. Morale in the village was currently at an all-time low, and nobody needed to hear that the granddaughter of the Shodai Hokage had turned traitor. As far as she was concerned, nobody would hear it. The official story would be that Orochimaru had found and killed Hiruzen's successor before Jiraiya could reach her. In a way, that was the truth since Orochimaru had caused her death the moment he'd made his offer.

"It looks like Danzo will be Hokage then." Homura said as he read over Jiraiya's report.

"No." Koharu replied."We agreed to follow Hiruzen's will, and that's just what we'll do."

"Jiraiya's refused, Tsunade's dead, Hatake Kakashi's incapacitated, and the chosen successor is still five years too young to take the position as Hiruzen planned. Pretty much all that is left are the Clan Heads and Danzo, and if we give it to one of the Clan Heads..." Homura replied.

"There may be a way around the Clan Head issue." Koharu said eventually.

"Really? How?" Homura asked.

"Do you remember who Jiraiya's other Genin besides Minato were?" Koharu asked.

"How could I forget? Hiashi was a chubby little thing back then. I'm still amazed that Jiraiya's bad habits only rubbed off on his female Genin. I'm still checking the trees around the bath for her despite the fact she died almost fifteen years ago." Homura replied. "What does that have to do with...oh, Nidaime's teaching line through the Sandaime then?"

"We will have to schedule a visit to the Hyuuga compound as soon as possible." Koharu said.

"What if he doesn't accept?" Homura asked.

"Then, we'll be forced to go with Danzo." Koharu replied.

"What about Hiruzen's chosen successor?" Homura asked as he looked up at the Hokage Monument. Things should have been different. In an ideal situation, they'd be advising the Yondaime. In the next best situation, they'd be sitting with Hiruzen five years from now watching as the Godaime's face was carved on the monument next to that of his father. The boy Hiruzen had chosen to succeed him was of an impeccable bloodline, not only related to the Senju, but he was also son of the Yondaime himself, and he already showed some signs of one day becoming a great leader like his father before him. Unfortunately, the child was far too young to take the position that Hatake Kakashi was supposed to be grooming him for.

"We can only ask." Koharu replied sadly.

&!&!&!&

Hiashi looked down at the scroll that had been delivered an hour ago for the hundredth time. It was a request to meet with the Council. The Council as in the Council Council, the Sandaime Hokage's advisors, not that squabbling mostly unofficial group of Clan Heads and merchants that the Hokage occasionally deigned to listen to which had also been dubbed with the moniker of The Council. Fearing that one of the Kumo ninja he'd killed after a pair of them had kidnapped Hinata during the confusion of the invasion had been important and that Kumo was demanding the head of another member of his family, he wrote a reply arranging for a meeting to take place that evening.

After he sent his reply, he spent the rest of his afternoon silently worrying. Eventually, evening came, and Sarutobi Hiruzen's former teammates came with it. As he had a meal set out for the venerable and respected shinobi who had been the Nidaime's students, he found he had no appetite. Who would it be this time? His father? Neji? Hinata? Or, god forbid, his little Hanabi who was a great deal like the fireworks she'd been named for?

Eventually, after the meal was finished, the Sandaime's advisors finally decided to get down to business.

"We have a request we would like to make of you." Koharu said.

A request?

"You are one of very few candidates left that we can chose from." Homura said. "As a former teammate of the Yondaime, you are the best choice available."

Candidate? Former teammate of the Yondaime? Were they asking what he thought they were asking?

"What about Jiraiya-sensei?" he asked.

"Jiraiya...Jiraiya has declined the position, and we have chosen to respect his wishes in this matter, especially since..." Koharu said sadly.

"Since?" he asked, fearing the answer.

"We had originally selected young Tsunade for the position. Orochimaru apparently caught wind of this, and assassinated her before Jiraiya could find her and inform her of her new title." Koharu replied. "Jiraiya has taken Tsunade's loss very personally."

"I see." he said, noting that Koharu's reply wasn't the truth, or not all of it. He would have to ask Jiraiya-sensei when he returned, IF he returned.

He saw a great deal. Something had gone seriously wrong, and the Council had come to him, basically telling him that he was the only choice they had left. Despite the fact that he didn't want the position, as dealing with his clan was difficult enough, there was only one thing he could do as a loyal shinobi of Konoha.

"I will do what is asked of me." he replied.

"Thank you." Koharu - who was apparently the Council spokeswoman this evening - said.

"There is one small request we would like to make." Homura said nervously.

"Request?" he asked.

"It's about your successor." Homura said.

"My successor?" he asked.

"Sarutobi hadn't planned on dying so soon, and had had a successor in mind whom he'd planned on naming Hokage on his eighteenth birthday which is five years from now before retiring a second time." Homura said.

"This successor wouldn't happen to be Uzumaki Naruto would it?" he asked. He was well aware of the boy's heritage. How could he not be, having been both Minato's teammate, and twin brother to the boy who had had a crush on Kushina and had ruined his chances with her when he put a bug in her hair.

"Yes." Homura finally replied.

"I'll consider it." he said. If the boy appeared to be an acceptable candidate in a few years, he could have the Hokage's hat and be welcome to it.

"Thank you Hokage-sama." Homura replied.

Hokage-sama. He would have to get used to the title quickly, even though he didn't really care for it. His goals in life had been surprisingly similar to the Nara boy's, even though things hadn't worked out that way. He'd always wanted a quiet life, and apparently hadn't been fated to get one. Fate really hated him.

&!&!&!&!&

**Author's Note:** As for the Naruto as the Sandaime's chosen successor thing, shortly before the invasion when Orochimaru disguised as the Yondaime Kazekage suggested that the Sandaime should hurry up and chose the Godaime, Hiruzen said that he didn't plan on retiring for "another five years". Interestingly enough, Naruto would be turning eighteen in a little over five years from that point. In the Canon Universe, I'm guessing Danzo had managed to talk Koharu and Homura around after they'd gone through three years of Tsunade as Hokage, and a Sixteen year-old Naruto who was woefully unprepared for the job returned to the village.


	2. Chapter 2

Hiashi knew the second he looked into his former sensei's eyes when the man returned to Konoha and gave his report. He also knew that there was nothing he could say to change the man's mind. Jiraiya was already gone. What was left standing in front of his new desk was a shell of the larger than life man who had trained him when he was a Genin. That man had been scooped out and torn away more than a week ago.

Team Sarutobi, more commonly known as the Legendary Sannin, had been Jiraiya's family for nearly forty-five years, ever since a trio of geniuses had graduated the ninja academy at the age of six and been personally selected by the Sandaime Hokage, and Jiraiya had been forced to kill two of them shortly after losing his sensei.

He'd seen something similar to this during the war when a Jounin had turned traitor, and one of his Genin had taken him and the teammate that had chosen to join him out before killing himself. One's Genin team quite often became closer family than one's own blood, especially when one didn't have anyone else. Losing Minato had been like losing a brother, and losing Ayumi had been like losing a sister. He should know, he'd lost a brother three years after Minato had sacrificed himself to save the village.

He had been right to fear losing someone when the Elders had sent their request for a meeting. As soon as Jiraiya finished his final tasks, he would be gone, and he would learn what it was like to lose a father before the one who was his flesh and blood died.

"I had planned on training Naruto, but..." Jiraiya said after he'd finished his report.

"I understand sensei." he said, knowing that this was goodbye. He could try to order Jiraiya to live, try to force him to live and train Naruto like he'd promised, but what life would that be when Jiraiya's heart had been torn away along with his biggest reason for living after he'd lost just about everything else?

Jiraiya left, and with him went the last of his own team that had been like family in a way, the team to whom he'd just been chubby little Hiashi rather than Hiashi-sama. The team that had shared his hopes, his dreams, and fought alongside him on the battlefield was now dead. Like the Hatake boy his teammate had trained, he was the last of his team. A part of him understood Jiraiya-sensei's desire to die.

When it came to the boy who was to be Jiraiya-sensei's apprentice, he would have to make sure that he would find someone to do a good enough job that Naruto would be able to succeed him when the time came. None would do as good a job as Jiraiya, but maybe someone would come close. He didn't know who though.

Top priority in Naruto's training would be seals. That had been the specialty of both of the child's parents as well as the boy's mother's clan. He had little doubt that that had been what Jiraiya-sensei had intended to teach the boy before everything went to hell. Perhaps when Naruto became a Seal Master like his parents before him...

Naruto was the closest thing they had to Minato. Being Minato's flesh and blood, perhaps he would be able to think along the same lines as the man had that day and make a similar leap in logic, a leap that dozens of Seal Masters and thousands of others that were proficient in seals had been unable to make. Minato had always been able to make wild leaps that nobody could follow, and strangely they had almost always payed off.

He opened a drawer in his new desk and pulled out a certain object, an object that might one day be the key to bringing Konoha back on top before the wolves that were already starting to circle brought it down.

A three pronged kunai...

Hiraishin.

The gods willing, there would be a new Yellow Flash in a few short years.

&!&!&!&

Shizune poured through Tsunade's old notes and journals, hoping to find something that would allow both Hatake Kakashi and the last loyal Uchiha to awaken. Konoha needed them both right now. Many of these notes had been gathering dust for years, unable to be used to help people because they had been written in a rather unusual shorthand that only two people could read, herself and Tsunade.

No, only she could read them now. Her teacher was gone. Her teacher had turned traitor to Konoha, and paid a traitor's price.

The notes on an experiment performed on an Iwa prisoner of war looked somewhat promising...

&!&!&!&

Danzo entered the Hokage's office, hoping that the Godaime Hokage would have the balls to do what the overly soft Sandaime could not. Hiruzen had been his friend and rival for almost as long as he could remember, but he'd also been soft when he should not have been. The man's Byakugan was active when he entered, preventing him from using Shisui's eye as a means of persuasion. He would have to use words then, words and inescapable logic. The sort of inescapable logic that Hiruzen had refused to listen to.

Other villages were already testing the waters, poking to see where Konoha was soft and vulnerable, testing the new leader who had only been in office for a couple of days. Despite the fact that Tsunade had been a gambling addict who was legendary for her bad luck, she would have been a better choice for Hokage if only because she would have provided an illusion of strength, an illusion that would have made those who were more familiar with her other reputation more cautious in their approach. It was a pity she'd turned traitor and had to be put down.

He decided not to beat around the bush with the new Hokage. He would be here all day otherwise. Hyuuga Hiashi could verbally spar with someone for days on end before they finally spit out what they'd come for outright.

"I came to ask about the Uzumaki boy." he said when all of the initial pleasantries were over.

"What about him?" the new Hokage asked.

"I wish to train him. The boy is a weapon that should be utilized for the good of the village. To our detriment, the Sandaime was too soft to do so." he said.

"You're right. The boy is a weapon." the Hokage said.

He quickly suppressed his feeling of shock. The man had agreed with him? Of course the man had agreed with him. The man had proven before that he was willing to do what it took to secure the safety of his clan and his village, even sacrifice his own brother.

"I have different plans for the boy though." the Hokage continued.

It was then that he noticed exactly what the Godaime Hokage was holding, what the man had been looking at when he'd entered the office. A tagged three-pointed Kunai.

Hiraishin.

The man intended to turn the Uzumaki child into another Yellow Flash.

This would clearly be to Konoha's advantage if he could actually pull it off. There had never been a ninja like Namikaze Minato before, and he'd feared that Konoha would never see his like again. Someone like the Uzumaki boy who was already gaining a reputation of his own on the battlefield with the Namikaze's skills would aid the village greatly and provide the sort of hope amongst the populace that a rampaging Jinchuriki could not.

He would offer any help that was needed. A couple of his operatives were near a mastery in Seals, and he had a boy around the Uzumaki boy's age that had a rather unusual skill that allowed him to move ink just about anywhere. If the boy learned that, he would be able to copy his father's ability to slap seals on just about everything, up to and including Koharu's ass, as had happened on that one memorable occasion where Jiraiya had made a particularly inappropriate dare, and the man had been drunk enough to take him up on it.

"I will be willing to provide any tutors the child may need should you ask it of me." he said before bowing politely and departing.

He'd had some reservations about Koharu and Homura's choice of Hokage, but now he could see why they had selected him. Unlike Tsunade, that man was unable to skate by on reputation alone, and unlike his predecessor, that man could be completely ruthless when the situation called for it. He would adopt a wait and see policy, but for now, it seemed that Hiruzen's teammates had made a wise choice.

&!&!&!&

Naruto had known that something was seriously wrong since the day they had killed Orochimaru. Jiraiya had been seemingly irresponsible and happy-go-lucky for that entire trip to retrieve the Tsunade woman, and on the day she turned traitor, it was like someone had flipped a switch. The fire that had been in the man's eyes had completely blown out.

He'd seen something like it once before when he was small. It had been one of his downstairs neighbors. The man had all but vanished for about a month, and then one day, the man had quietly finished a bottle of sake on the front stairs, patted him on the head, gone back to his apartment, and hanged himself.

Jiraiya was dying, and he didn't know what to say or do to stop it.

He'd tried. The entire way back, he'd tried. He'd done anything and everything he could think of, and nothing worked. Jiraiya was one of the walking dead. He'd died the minute he'd put that kunai through his teammate's heart. All that was left was for the man to finally stop breathing.

He didn't want the man to stop breathing though. He wanted that fire that had been in Jiraiya's eyes to return, and for the man to teach him something neat while he did something extremely stupid and perverted.

As he followed Jiraiya around town hoping that the man wouldn't do it if he knew he was there, the man went to a bar where he wrote out several letters which he handed to various toads to deliver. After that, the man talked to a pair of elderly toads who looked very sad for some reason. He suspected that he knew what the reason was.

Eventually, Jiraiya left the bar and made his way to one of the training fields, the field where Kakashi's farce of a Genin test had taken place to be exact. When he reached a spot next to the three training posts, he pulled out a short sword and...

And Naruto found his view being blocked by Tetsuo-sensei who was holding him, trying to keep him from going over to Jiraiya and...and doing something.

When he finally got loose, the deed was done and the last of the Sannin was gone.

There was a funeral two days later that was attended by a large number of people including a rather angry looking white haired man who looked to be about thirty. At the back of the group, trying to be invisible, was a strange looking orange haired man with piercings everywhere, and a blue haired woman. Naruto had no idea of who they could have been, and nobody he asked had any idea either. He couldn't ask them, since they had vanished into thin air the instant the funeral was over, and he hadn't seen them again.

It was after the funeral that Hinata's father who was the new Hokage approached him and told him that he would be trained in the sealing arts amongst other things.


End file.
